Nao Murakami has gone native. In just two years of living in Bengaluru, the Tokyo-born executive has mastered the ultimate native skill — the Indian head-bob. He is able to nod his way through meals and meetings in the city and beyond, all the way to Indore, where his portfolio company Shop Kirana is based.

This is not an accident. Murakami lives like a local in Bengaluru, eating dosas at Darshini cafes and dealing with truculent taxi drivers. It’s something of a departure from his past life as a Nomura banker in Tokyo and New York. Murakami’s thesis is that to have an edge as an investor, you have to stay close to your market and your founders.

“So, to differentiate us from other big funds, we are trying to be extremely close to our portfolio companies, whether it be weekly calls or staying at founder’s home in Indore,” he says over lunch at Harima, an upscale eatery that caters to Japanese expats.

Murakami is the India head at Incubate Fund, a Japanese venture capital firm that has struck eight deals in two years. A ninth is in the works. A leisurely meal like this is a rarity, he says.Long workdays and meals on the go are the norm. That’s the only way to be when you are scouting for winning bets in a crowded market.Since 2014, American investors have put in a cumulative $18.9 billion in Indian startups, across 1,151 funding rounds. In comparison, Asian investors have brought in $23.45 billion, across 464 funding rounds, according to data from deal intelligence firm Tracxn. Masayoshi Son’s Softbank alone accounts for much of the heft on the Asian side, but the shift in the centre of gravity from the US to Asia as the funding source for Indian startups is pronounced.

But there’s more going on under the surface.

Murakami is part of the second wave of Asian investors to hit Indian shores. By deal size, they are in the shadows of giants who came first, such as Softbank, Alibaba and Tencent. But these are also different kind of players. They work closely with their portfolio companies. They move really fast — there’s no wavering over investment decisions. They encourage portfolio companies to think beyond India, and will facilitate market entry in proximate Asian markets when the time is right. Many of them are consumer internet giants themselves or have close ties with such companies in different parts of Asia. This means useful knowledge in every area of operation, from regulation to consumer friction points, operating in cultures that are similar to ours.All of this, combined with both successful and fledgling Indian startups looking at overseas markets, is forging a virtual Asian startup corridor. Sooner than later, resources, talent, markets and capital could all flow, somewhat seamlessly, between India and key Asian markets such as China, Japan, Korea and Indonesia.

Incubate Fund, which has done more than 200 deals in Japan and elsewhere, has invested in Nimble (which helps companies manage wireless data), Stay Abode (maker of co-living spaces) and Skillate (HR tech startup), apart from Shop Kirana and others. Murakami looks to back companies in sectors where traditional investment powerhouses are relatively weak.He focuses on ventures plotting an expansion to East Asia and is partial to emerging opportunities in segments such as artificial intelligence and internet of things.

While backing from storied Silicon Valley VCs including Sequoia and Accel is widely considered a prestigious notch in the journey of a startup, pragmatic founders are thinking beyond. Rather than get carried away by Silicon Valley money, influence and network, they are now going after specific opportunities with Asian investors.

Incubate, Beenext (Japan), Shunwei (China), Gree Ventures (Japan), Meituan Dianping (Chinese firm, co-investor in Swiggy), Xiaomi (Chinese firm that is now India’s top handset maker; leading a $100 million round in Indic language chat startup Sharechat) and Neoplux (Korea) are among the Asian investors who have already made some investments in India and are expanding.

There’s also Ganesha Ventures, a $250 million fund backed by limited partners, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma. Mirae, the South Korean financial services giant, is reportedly readying a $1 billion startup fund with India as one of the focus geographies. Taizo Son, younger brother of the Softbank founder, runs an India-focused fund named Mistletoe, which has invested in companies such as Innerchef, Ninjakart and Kisan Network.

“The fact that Asian investors are backing or plan to invest in India is a clear sign that have reached a point where they can compete headto-head with western VCs searching for the next Amazon or Uber in emerging markets,” argues Anindya Ghose, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.Asian investors find the Chinese market to be overcrowded and overheated. Other mature markets such as Japan and Korea are too slow to seed red-hot startups. This makes India a natural destination, even though there are concerns about the country’s real market size. Investors who rushed here lured by the size of the market have been humbled by the limited number of Indians with discretionary income. Indians deemed to be the middle class, with annual income of more than Rs 2,50,000 (per one definition by the National Institute for Applied Economic Research) numbers about 78 million, according to research cited recently by The Economist. The number of Indians who have shopped online is estimated to be just 50 million. As a result of these skewed projections, venture capitalists have struggled to make outsize returns (a core idea of the business) on most of their India bets.

If these concerns are weighing on the minds of businesses considering an India entry, there are other ways to use India beneficially. Go-Jek, the Indonesian venture that began with a ride-sharing service but has since grown into an assortment of segments ranging from food delivery to fintech, has doubled the size of its tech centre in Bengaluru. It has also made several acquisitions to add to its technical heft. Engineers here develop and service 18 different products. It’s a popular service elsewhere in Asia run by Indian technical talent. As their presence in India expands, it’s probably only a matter of time before Go-Jek launches services here.

While ET had reported that Go-Jek would launch its bike sharing business in the second half of 2018, Niranjan Paranjpe, CTO of the company, says the focus for now is on expanding its tech capabilities, rather than focusing on an India market push. “Our idea is to become a super app and a one-stop destination for users,” he says. “We just became the largest online food delivery business outside of China and have similar ambitions for our other units.”Progate, a Japanese company that helps people learn computer-programming skills, is another venture that has set up shop in India. Other include Gooma, a Myanmar-headquartered gaming company, Freakout, a Japanese advertising venture, Agri Buddy from Cambodia, which offers market intelligence for farmers, and BeNative from South Korea, which offers e-learning solutions.

Indian entrepreneurs and their startups, coming off a couple of years when funding had dried up, are delighted to have the attention of Asian investors, and the potential overseas markets that come with it.

StayAbode is a provider of budget co-living spaces. Founded over two years ago, the firm has over 300 beds across a dozen properties in Bengaluru, with plans to expand across the country and overseas. To do this, it needed an investor who could help it think big and had knowledge of these overseas markets. “We chose to get them (an Asian investor) primarily because of their understanding of global trends and global market opportunities,” says Viral Chhajer, cofounder of the venture.

Several founders say Asian investors seem to be able to give them a better sense of how to turbo-charge their growth plans, especially those who have businesses centred around the mobile and business-to-consumer markets.

The Asian mobile economy is far more sophisticated than its American counterpart.Some Asian investors are also seen as nimbler, especially compared to their Indian peers. Entrepreneurs say that they close deals in as little as 10 days to a fortnight, counting on the skills of the founding team to take risks and build a high-growth startup.

K Ganesh, the cofounder of Growth Story, an investment and incubation unit, reckons that there will be all sizes of Asian investors tapping the Indian opportunity, as it unfolds. Large Chinese investors such as Meituan (that operate on the lines of hedge funds and make big, opportunistic bets) to more focused investors, will all want a piece of the pie. One of his portfolio companies, Hunger Box, a B2B food provider, had raised $4.5 million from investors led by Korean VC Neoplux.

The founders of Locus, a three-year-old venture, have laid down an ambitious plan to entirely automate human decisions in shipping a piece of cargo. The firm, backed by Japanese investor Recruit Holdings, now wants to leapfrog from the Indian market to Japan, one of the most advanced users of such technology. “Locus perceives Japan as a key market going forward … our partners will play a crucial role in expanding our operations,” says Nishith Rastogi, a cofounder and CEO of the firm.One way for Indian startups to understand the scale and complexity of operating in these new markets is to see for themselves.

At least twice in the past quarter, Asian VCs have taken fellow investors and startup founders to Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Japan to get an upclose look at what their future could hold.

According to investors and entrepreneurs who were part of these trips, the focus is two-fold. “Indian startups are spending significant amounts of time in east and south east Asian markets understanding local nuances as they seek to expand,” says Sanjay Nath, cofounder, Blume Ventures, an early stage investor. “But equally, there’s been a surge of interest from local (Asian) funds seeking partnerships to understand our ecosystem.”

Cashify, an online platform for the exchange of electronics goods, hopes to grow their business beyond India. Founded four years ago, Cashify does 1,00,000 transactions across 25 cities currently and expects this to double in 12 months.

Mandeep Manocha, its CEO and cofounder, says having an Asian investor is invaluable. “In our case, our Chinese investors bring a deep understanding of a similar business in a market which is operating at a much larger scale and has been instrumental in opening doors.”Return JourneyThis kind of interest in Asian backing has compelled some folk to revisit some old haunts. Tak Lee, of TKN Advisors, an exclusive advisor to Neoplux, the investment arm of a Korean conglomerate Doosan Group, for the Indian market, first came backpacking to India in 2005. Since then, his trips to the country for a multitude of business reasons, but 30 months ago, he made Bengaluru his home when he started his own cross-border startup accelerator and the investment firm’s India office later on. Along the way , he has notched up four deals and expects to ink more soon. “Korean Investors and entrepreneurs are just beginning to warm up to the potential in the Indian market,” he says , despite his investment firm’s own ambition. For starters, Neoplux wants to set up an India-dedicated fund to make these deals soon, even if it is yet undecided in what stage of a startup’s evolution it wants to take a bet.

South Korea itself wants to expand its startup incubator in south east Delhi and set up a larger unit in Gurugram to allow ventures from both countries to collaborate, the country’s SME and startup minister Hong Jon-Haak announced last month.

Started in 2014 in Japan, by two engineering students, Progate was a startup that gave wannabe software writers an easy way to code. Especially popular with non-techies, this app racked up some 2,50,000 users with its Japanese version, before the founders decided to launch an English version in late 2017, in India. Since then, the company’s executives have been aggressively promoting its capabilities, especially across some 30 colleges they have visited nationwide.

“We realised that even though there are many people here who want to code there is no easy way to get started, or most courses available teach outdated languages to newbies,” says Takuno Nishimura, global manager at Progate, who relocated to India in February this year to drive this strategy. Progate today has a user base of 40,000 in India, even as it builds out a B2B unit to also drive growth. Several others are also queuing up. Singapore-based MatchMove, a fintech firm, for example, also sees India as a key market for its product that allows banking as a service to other startups such as SlicePay, Rubique, RewardPort and several others.

Deal after deal, a startup corridor across Asia surely seems to be taking shape.